


Blue Snakeskin Sky

by Laylah



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Action/Adventure, Community: livelongnmarry, Multi, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-02
Updated: 2009-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:04:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They used to screw after jobs, when they were both keyed up on adrenaline and needed something, anything to take the edge off. Now...well, frustration's nothing like the thrill of a job well done, but it needs to get the edge taken off just as bad.</p><p>[postgame; uses Advent Children canon but nothing else from the compilation]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Snakeskin Sky

"You should still be in bed, sir," Elena says, when she finds Tseng in the new makeshift dojo. She can't help it. In her mind's eye she still sees him the way he looked at the Temple, skin white with blood loss, his hands slick red from holding the gaping wound Masamune left him.

"The hospital's in worse shape than I am," Tseng answers, and smiles. Elena thinks she never wanted to know that he smiles as a defense mechanism.

He shifts from one stretch into the next as if she hadn't interrupted him. The scar is a satiny white line below his ribs, his skin a healthier shade now so that it stands out clearly. Elena sighs in frustration.

"Do you want to help?" Tseng asks, and rises to his feet. It would look like a graceful motion if Elena didn't know him capable of better. "Pick up one of the practice swords and give me a reason to focus.

"You're not fully recovered," Elena protests.

"And it's only a bamboo practice sword," Tseng says mildly.

"You took Reno off duty and had him in the hospital for weeks when he'd taken less damage than --"

"Is that a no?" Tseng asks, his voice gone cold and sharp.

Elena swallows hard. "No, sir," she says. She slips out of her jacket and hangs it up before she chooses her weapon. She's never liked swords, never seen the point -- ha, ha -- of putting yourself in that kind of close-combat trouble if you can avoid it. But this last year has taught all of them how dangerous it can be to not take swordsmen seriously enough.

"Ready," Tseng says when she takes her position across the mat from him. "Don't hold back."

Easy for you to say, Elena wants to retort -- between the knowledge that he's still recovering, and the healthy terror of his reputation that she remembers from her days in training, she doesn't have any desire to go through with this.

She starts with a simple pass, moves she used to have to do for drills, slash forward, turn the sword, and cut -- Tseng moves, focused, getting out of her way, deflecting the blade's flat with quick strikes that Elena feels shuddering up her arms. It's a brutally unbalanced match, sword against bare hands; almost nobody can keep it up for long. The trick to it, Rude would say when people got him talking on the subject, is buying a second to use your materia, not punching the guy's lights out.

They manage two passes, three, and Elena can feel sweat trickling down through her hair. She's overdressed to be fighting in here. The fourth time she attacks, Tseng twists, pushing her sword away so her balance suffers -- and then his breath hitches and he stumbles, crumples to the mat.

"Sir," Elena says sharply. She lowers her sword, sinks to her knees to reach for him. "You should give yourself time to heal."

Tseng shakes his head stubbornly, rising to his feet without her aid. "The Planet won't wait for that," he says. "And ShinRa _can't_ wait for that. We don't have any trainees in reserve to cover for me." His hands are trembling but his voice is steady. "Again. Twice as fast this time."

*

They're pinned down on the wrong side of the warehouse, with most of the gang members -- _gang members_, how have the mighty fucking fallen -- between them and the rendezvous point. It wasn't even worth it, the lab they were after already raided, probably by these same goons or others just like them. Assholes who break what they can't shoot or snort or fuck. Reno should know.

Machine gun fire rattles through the warehouse, and Elena stiffens beside him, making this worried little gasp. "Sir," she says, like she's not even thinking about where she is. She starts to get up from her crouch.

"Cool it," Reno says, and grabs her sleeve. It's cute how she worries and all, but she still doesn't seem to get just how _much_ of a tough bastard Tseng is. "Don't be a valentine."

"A what?" Elena says, but if she's confused at least she stops trying to do stupid heroic shit.

Reno grins. If you get calm under pressure it pisses the bad guys off. "You never heard that? Rookie." He can see wires overhead, stretching across the ceiling and then dangling down into the dark between them and freedom. "Means don't get so caught up in personal shit that you don't get the job done." He's kind of already at the point where trying to use his materia makes his teeth grind and his hands shake, but it's not like ether fucking grows on trees -- and it's not like trees grow around here even if it did. "Now shut up, I gotta concentrate."

Elena glares. "You're the one talking." But Reno shrugs her off, tracking the wires back, finding the panel they plug into. He doesn't think he has the energy left for a Bolt 3, but he can manage a 2 okay. At least once. There's another burst of gunfire, and Reno swallows a curse. Never thought he'd miss the fucking SOLDIERs, but this kind of straight up battle is what those meatheads were made for.

Turks, now, Turks win by being sneaky.

Reno casts his Bolt into the power box, raw overloading current slamming into those snapped wires. Sparks fly up from beyond their cover, and there's cursing in voices with thick Junon accents, a second before the roasting smell makes it to them. Elena makes a face.

"Now shoot," Reno says.

Elena nods, rises and turns like she's on the old obstacle course getting graded on how smooth her form is. Her shoulders are square and her gun braced in both hands, by the book, and she squeezes off five shots without pausing. The report echoes in the warehouse, and there's no more cursing after that.

"Head shots?" Reno asks, pulling himself up awkwardly.

"I'm learning," Elena says. The corner of her mouth might be turning up in a smile.

Reno doesn't get a chance to say anything snotty like _it's about time_ before the doors rattle up and the beam of a searchlight sweeps over them. "No survivors?" Tseng's voice asks, through the loudspeaker system on the helicopter.

"We're the fucking Turks," Reno calls back. "And it took you long enough." He and Elena step out from behind their cover, and he gets about three good steps toward the door before the mission catches up with him and he blacks right out.

*

Rude does more of the talking than he used to. Before all this stuff went down, they split up the jobs so they each got to play to their strengths -- Reno cursed at people and Rude punched them, when they were being diplomatic. Too many of the new jobs don't go like that at all.

"We understand that it's a lot to ask," Rude says, watching the doctor's eyes. All she wants is for ShinRa's dogs to get out of her hospital, and it shows on her face. "We're willing to share any new information that the rest of our teams uncover, and we have the funding to keep your lab operational for years."

"We'll get by without your blood money," the doctor says. "We do research here to help people, not to improve the portfolio of your company."

"Tch," Reno says. He's been holding remarkably still, not even wandering over to make their host nervous by inspecting the supply cabinet. "Wasting our time, partner. She ain't going to want to help until something goes wrong here." He smiles, the way he does when Rude hands him a detonator.

"Reno," Rude says. Calm, cautioning. This part is old and familiar, and he wishes threats still worked. It was an easier job.

"You can't bully your way into everything you want these days," the doctor says. Her mouth is tight at the corners but she's holding her ground.

She does flinch, at least, when Rude reaches into his jacket. "Here," he says, and hands her a business card. The phone number printed on it is Tseng's, not his. He's talked enough. "Call us if you change your mind."

When they leave he doesn't look back, doesn't want to know if she's going to just throw the card away. She wouldn't be the first.

Reno spends the whole trip back to the hotel doing all the talking he skipped in the meeting. At first it sounds like he's just making up for lost time, but by the third time he comes back to the theme of making those uppity bastards pay, Rude realizes that actually this is a dose of Reno's version of sympathy.

"Partner," he says, when they get back to their crappy hotel (_And another thing_, Reno said on the way up the stairs. _Why aren't there decent hotels in this little shit town?_), and Reno stops. Rude's tired of explaining, doesn't think he needs to explain this. "Come here."

They used to screw after jobs, when they were both keyed up on adrenaline and needed something, anything to take the edge off. Now...well, frustration's nothing like the thrill of a job well done, but it needs to get the edge taken off just as bad. Reno drags blunt nails down Rude's back and Rude snarls a hand in Reno's hair, and neither one of them wants to draw it out, not like this.

Rude falls asleep after, and wakes up a couple hours later when it's full dark. Reno's gone, and he's taken Rude's Fire materia with him. Rude flips the light on. There's a piece of hotel stationery stuck to the mirror, with Reno's spiky marker scrawl across it: _when you hear sirens, start the chopper._

They won't get any help out of Kalm's hospital, maybe, but they'll both go home counting the mission a success.

*

Tseng listens to Rude's terse report with a headache building behind his eyes. He can't remember if he always got them this regularly and just didn't care, because potions were nearly as cheap as clean water in Midgar, or if he's worse off now than he used to be.

No; he knows the answer to that. They're all worse off than they used to be.

When Rude leaves, Tseng goes upstairs -- even now, Rufus will have his office upstairs, even when the building is a faceless little office complex, even when negotiating the stairs takes all the strength he can manage, his recovery too slow and compromised for anyone's comfort. Tseng knocks at the door.

"Come in," Rufus says.

He's sitting up in his chair, by the window, which means he felt well enough this morning to get out of bed and dress himself. Tseng wishes he had good news to relate.

"Rude has brought news from Cosmo Canyon," he says. He catches himself looking for marks on Rufus's skin, looking for the spread of black lesions past the edges of Rufus's fine-weave suit. "The...syndrome, whatever it is, has been spreading. It's most concentrated near Midgar, but there are cases appearing all over the Planet."

Rufus stands up, slowly, holding onto the arms of the chair. It's a miracle he's walking at all, after the others had to dig him out of the rubble of the Tower. "So the plague spreads," he says, lifting one arm so his sleeve falls back. The discoloration has claimed most of his forearm now. "Did they suggest a cause? An origin?"

Tseng shakes his head; not _no_ but _nothing good_. "There is a theory," he says carefully, "that the syndrome is...a sort of WEAPON itself. A way for the Planet to defend itself against a cancer."

"I won't accept that," Rufus says, drawing himself up straight. His expression is fierce and proud; it would look good on television, if anyone were still broadcasting from Midgar or its Edge. He turns, pacing, as if he still has the scarlet carpet of his office beneath his feet. "We will not allow --" and then he stops, sways, clutching at the air.

Tseng is beside him in a heartbeat, offering an arm for support, watching the too-quick pulse beneath his jaw. "You should --" not rest, not wait to recover; none of them have been willing to do that, and there is no guarantee of recovery from this -- "pace yourself."

"This," Rufus says, holding on too tightly to Tseng's sleeve. He swallows hard, twice, and tries again. "This will not be the legacy I leave behind."

"Of course not, sir," Tseng says. Wutai still bleeds, beneath the polite welcome of places like Turtle's Paradise; towns from Corel to Gongaga scrape by stripped of every resource but stubborn pride; the wreckage of Sister Ray sprawls broken-backed across what's left of Midgar. How can any one of ShinRa's works become its sole legacy?

Rufus's indrawn breaths are sharp, like each one is an argument. "We can defeat this," he says, and Tseng can hear the question laid under it, the need for reassurance that Rufus would never admit to. "This...rot."

Can God make a mountain so heavy he cannot lift it? Can ShinRa make a monster so terrible it cannot leash it? Sephiroth was bad enough, but at least the Planet rejected Meteor as much as her inhabitants did. If she's choosing to reject them, now....

"We can," Tseng says. Any of the others would say the same.


End file.
